Joyful through pain, victorious through suffering.

Insignificant by Chris Travis

When you’re young you feel like you have all the time in this world. It gives an illusion that no harm will befall on you, that somehow life is long so you take your time as long as you want. I will be turning forty this month and I realized with all the years I spent living in this world that life is short. It is so true what the Bible said:

“For you, are as a passing day, as brief as few night hours (Psalm 90:4 NLT).”
“…A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day (2 Peter 3:8 NLT).”

Please don’t tell me I am still young. It’s the same thing I heard before when I was in my twenties and look where it got me. I became complacent and comfortable. Comfortable is nice but nothing grows there. For this past weeks I’ve been contemplating all the things that happened in my life, all the things that I did. The reasons why I did such things and the reason why I will do things. Is it for me? To impress? For money? For what? For who? Why? Is it worth it? Is everything just vanities? Why do we do what we do?

Was the love I showed to my former spouse worth it despite the way she’d treated me? Do I proclaim God’s love enough by loving those who persecute and ridicule me because of my faith? I share the gospel as much as I can and wherever I can but sometimes when the results are few or none, I get discourage. Why even bother. A thousand times has cross my mind about shutting this blog and stop posting quotes on my Facebook page. That’s why I like to remind myself of the why’s. No, I am not begging for followers or likes. I just want to expand the purpose of why we do such things beyond the superficial reasons.

I love it that God always communicate through us by various means. It could be through His words-the Bible, coincidence, circumstance, trials, movies and through a book.

This book is about a Christian teacher who went to teach in one of the worst or the worst public school in New York. This school is so bad that teachers get beaten up. He had a choice to quit but God put Him there for a reason to be the salt and the light. Even though he knows that God wants Him there, they are a lot of times when he’s faith got push where he’s in the point of exploding and rush out of there. Eventually, the students gave him the due respect. Because of one certain thing, he never gave up on them. He isn’t doing it for the money, or prestige. He is doing it for God, and at the end of the day that’s the only thing that matters regardless if it bear fruit or not.

That is such a huge eye opener for me. From then, I knew I have to change my perspective again and we all know how powerful perceptions are. He even went to add to do everything to God not just the big things but even the little things. It is such a fresh breath of air changing your view from temporal to eternal.

Here are some of my favorites and I quote:

“The challenge for most of us isn’t to change the work we do but to change who we’re doing for.”

“Jesus is not calling you to give more of yourself to God. Jesus is calling you to give everything to him.”

“Get serious about a daily surrender to God, and the big picture works itself out. But whatever he would have me do, it must be for him.”

“Possessions wear out, but people last forever. Use things that do not last forever to affect things that do.”

“Instead of mastering money and using it to serve God, how many of us are serving money instead.”

“Nothing can stop love. The worst the world can muster against love is death. But when we nailed love to the cross, we fulfilled Christ’s mission to forgive.”

To all the believers out there, remember who you are doing it for…
To all the unbelievers, He is still waiting for you…